1992 World Extreme Skiing Championships Surfaces On YouTube
Competitive freeride skiing looked a lot different in the early 1990s.
At the 1992 World Extreme Skiing Championships (WESC), competitors donned one-pieces (who needs waterproof gear when you have a fart bag?) and tackled the slopes of Valdez, Alaska, riding long, skinny skis.
Despite the outdated equipment, they could still throw down. Here's the full broadcast of the historic event.
The parallels between the WESC and competitive freeride skiing's modern iteration—the Freeride World Tour—are immediately obvious if you sift through the sheen of 90s-era silliness.
Most importantly, judging hasn't changed all that much.
During the WESC, competitors were judged on six components: degree of difficulty, aggressiveness, technique/style, air, control, and fluidity.
The Freeride World Tour borrows these judging elements, scoring athletes on line, control, technique, fluidity, and air and style.
Kim Reichelm—a skiing legend and 1992 WESC judge—in an interview at the start of the broadcast, explained what she was hoping to see from the athletes during the Valdez competition.
"If air is caught, it needs to be landed cleanly," Reichelm said. "The athlete always needs to be in control."
Reichelm could've been speaking about the 2024 Freeride World Tour. Control and fluidity remain king on that circuit—the Freeride World Tour judges aren't afraid of heavily docking athletes for backslaps and other slip-ups. Fast, aggressive runs frequently win Freeride World Tour competitions and make for top-notch viewing.
It's impressive that a format designed several decades ago remains applicable to modern freeride skiing, especially considering that the WESC was an experiment—not all of skiing's historical flings maintain a significant cache. Kids these days don't dream of competing on the Ski Ballet World Tour.
This much is true: without the WESC's pioneering vision, we might not be singing the praises of competitive freeride skiing's contemporary legends, like Hedvig Wessel and Max Hitzig.
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